Lac-Mégantic lawsuit targets 11 companies

Riley Sparks, The Gazette08.09.2013

Dianne Doyon pauses outside her dépanneur Epicerie Chez Pit in Lac-Mégantic, 216 kms east of Montreal, on Thursday, August 1, 2013. Doyon's son was set to be married in the downtown Ste-Agnes church on Saturday, July 6, the day a train carrying crude oil derailed and destroyed much of the town's core, claming the lives of 47 people. The wedding has been postponed with no rescheduled date.

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MONTREAL — Eleven companies in North Dakota and Illinois are being sued over their involvement in the fatal train explosion in Lac-Mégantic last month.

“I very much doubt that these cases will ever get to trial, because I think the juries will crucify these companies,” said Edward Jazlowiecki, a lawyer in Connecticut who is one of three lawyers acting for a Lac-Mégantic family.

The lawsuit alleges that Montreal, Maine and Atlantic knew it was dangerous to leave a train loaded with crude oil unattended on a main track near Nantes, where it started rolling downhill toward Lac-Mégantic.

It also alleges that the company failed to train its employees to apply enough brakes to secure the train, and says that MMA should have had more than one employee on the train’s crew.

The lawsuit also targets seven North Dakota oil companies, who, lawyers say, should not have loaded crude oil into thin-skinned DOT-111 tanker cars.

The lawsuit was filed in Cook County, Ill., where Montreal, Maine and Atlantic’s parent company, Rail World, is located.

In Canada, courts can award plaintiffs a maximum of $326,000 as compensation for non-economic damages like emotional distress.

The state of Illinois has no limit on that type of compensation.

“The cases are worth so much more in the U.S.,” Jazlowiecki said.

He is working on the case with lawyers Mitchell Toups, in Texas, and Gloriane Blais, in Lac-Mégantic. Blais’s downtown office was destroyed in the blast.

In addition to MMA, the lawsuit names oil companies involved in extracting the crude oil from a North Dakota field and transporting it to an Irving refinery in Saint John, N.B.

Jazlowiecki said more defendants could be added to the suit, but that for now lawyers had decided to target the companies directly responsible for the train and its contents.

“You can go after 20 more people, but the case is worth X number of dollars whether you have ten defendants or 100 defendants. We’ve got 11 companies — we’ve got more than enough people to go after,” he said.

MMA has so far refused to cover the almost $8 million bill for clearing the debris and oil from downtown Lac-Mégantic.

The railway is considering declaring bankruptcy, company chair Ed Burkhardt said on Wednesday.

The company laid off 24 of its Quebec employees in mid-July.

On Friday, an electrician who did contract work for MMA said the most recent cheque from the company had bounced.

But because the lawsuit targets multi-billion dollar oil companies — World Fuel, one of the companies named, has about $232 million in the bank — Jazlowiecki said he was confident plaintiffs could receive substantial compensation.

“These companies make more money annually than the gross national product of some third world countries. They have more money than they know what to do with,” he said.

“Not all of them can go bankrupt, so we’re not worried about collecting.”

Jazlowiecki said he thought the case might take two or three years.

The lawsuit is one of three filed recently in relation to the explosion in Lac-Mégantic on July 6.

Lac-Mégantic residents Yannick Gagné and Guy Ouellet filed a request in Sherbrooke last week asking for permission to start a class-action suit for other residents affected by the disaster.

Another lawsuit filed in Chicago on behalf of ten victims is asking for over $50 million in damages.

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